Django Unchained

December 25, 2012

The latest trailer for Quentin Tarantino's romp through black slavery has a lot more of Leonardo DiCaprio (who seems to be having more fun with this role than he's had maybe ever). It also has Samuel L. Jackson's Uncle Tom/Ben character, which confirms that it is now officially a movie. And we get our first glimpse of Jonah Hill playing a very Jonah Hill-like pre-Klansman, in a comic scene that reads like Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Racist. Like the first trailer, it's all a lot of fun—but in DiCaprio's bemused wondering aloud about why the "black faces" in his life don't just "rise up and kill the whites," and the in-your-face tag "LET FREEDOM RING," you are reminded that Django Unchained is about more than just quips and blood spatters and Mandingo parlor games. It's also about our nation confronting the specter of slavery, saying, "What's up, slavery?" then artfully gunning it down.